Talent Solution #3: Parents Returning to Work
Did you know that according to the 2018 Census*, there are more mums in paid employment than ever before?
Following on from our previous post, there are a lot of ways to work around talent shortages but you need to be willing to embrace solutions that challenge the cookie cutter mentality, like embracing the parents who want to return to work!
Did you know that according to the 2018 Census*, there are more mums in paid employment than ever before? That’s 352,700 women with kids under the age of 14 getting amongst it in the New Zealand workforce, which makes up around 28.5% of all working women.
Doesn’t really sound like that many, does it? Not when you consider that at AJ 34% of our team are working mums (would be a higher percentage if we counted those with kids aged 14+). It’s been our experience that a mum makes one of the most passionate and dedicated workers, so we’re always stoked when one decides to join our team.
And it seems as though the feeling is mutual.
We conduct engagement surveys every quarter and when we ask the team ‘the demands of my workload are manageable’ and ‘I have flexibility in my role’, we usually get top marks which means that everyone, including our working mums feel supported and able to maintain that essential work/life balance. That’s something we’re incredibly proud of because we know how hard it is for mums to conquer their “mum guilt” and feel good about what they’re doing for themselves, and their families when they go to work.
For every primary caregiver who’s returned to work, we reckon there’s a few more that would do the same if they could find a role that suited their needs. They need an employer that understands that kids and family come first so there will be times they’re needed elsewhere and must drop everything to look after their nearest and dearest. They need a supportive team that picks up any slack when things hit the fan on the home front, all the while knowing the favour will be paid back tenfold. They need a role that allows them to reconnect with what they’re good at while giving them opportunities to continue their learning and development.
Our symbiotic relationship with the working mums (but this can be applied to parents returning to work) on our team works in three key ways:
Three Ways to Support Parents Back Into Work:
- Part-time hours that suit
We negotiate hours that work for both of us. Some parents want to work school hours only, while others are happy to work full-time hours but not the full five days.
As long as expectations are clear and reasonable from the outset, we’ve found a parent returning to work puts in a performance that is everything we need and more. - Job sharing
There are some roles that simply cannot be scaled back to fit within part-time hours, so to counter this we found two amazing and capable mum’s to share the role over the course of the week.
They cover each other seamlessly and our clients feel supported 100% of the time. When asked how it works for them, we’re told “that they love knowing that when it comes time for them to leave, there’s no guilt because they know that the other will do what needs to be done, and vice versa.” How’s that for unity.
Imagine that; knowing that even when you’re not there, important tasks will be completed as if you were doing them yourself! - Hybrid working
The various lockdowns have proven that we can work effectively at home, so we’ve embraced hybrid working and have offered the team to work from home on an ‘as and when’ basis.
This means that if a working parent that is also the main caregiver has a kid home from school sick or injured, they used to have to take sick leave but now they can choose to juggle their commitment as caregiver with their commitment to their work.
We can’t tell you how many times a parent has sacrificed all their sick leave to look after other people and end up with not enough to cover her own health and wellbeing needs, so it feels good knowing that this new policy will alleviate that concern.
If you’re struggling to find the right person for your role, it might be that you’re missing out on people who are everything you need and more simply because your search criteria are too narrow. Broaden that scope to include part-timers, job sharers and hybrid workers, and you just might find your options increase exponentially.
Ngā mihi nui
Kim
*Women in the Workforce 2017, Stats NZ
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